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The Association Game (TAG)® Worksheet

Check Out What’s Inside Breaking Bias!

- Why Break Bias?
  - The Unicorn in the Room
- What Is Breaking Bias?
- The PRISM Toolkit: Our Pathway to Breaking Bias
- Preparing for Your Breaking Bias Journey
  - Safety Measures for Your Breaking Bias Journey
- Financial Benefits of Breaking Bias
- Your Breaking Bias Journey Ahead

Part I: The Basis of Bias

- What Humans Share Across Our Diversity
  - Our Primary Identity
  - The Mind: The Basis of Our Experiences
  - What We Identify with Becomes Our Reality
- Our Secondary Identities
  - Biological Identities
  - Experiential Identities
  - Social Identities
- Intersectionality: Putting Our Identities Together
- Social Power: Dominant and Subordinated Groups
  - Consequences of Social Power: Ease and Pain
  - The Ease and Pain of Passing
  - The Antidote to Pain and Ease
- Prosocial Behavior PRISM Practice: Loving-Kindness
- Before Human “History”
- Beginning of History
  - Comparing Mind
  - Inclusion and Exclusion Consciousness: Interbeing and Wetiko
- Exclusion Paradigms in the Ancient Age
- Transition to the Medieval Age
  - Europe’s Exclusion Paradigm in the Medieval Age
  - The Islamic World’s Exclusion Paradigm in the Medieval Age
- Modernity’s Exclusion Paradigm
  - The Spread of Europe’s Wetiko Globally
- What Does the Dominant Exclusion Paradigm Want?
- The Rise of Inclusion Consciousness
- PRISM Practices
- Let’s Play TAG: The Association Game
  - Vedana and Stereotypes
- The Science of Stereotyping
  - Stereotypes as Perception: The Stereotype Content Model
  - The Implicit Association Test: Measuring the Vedana of Stereotypes
  - The Play of Perception: Conscious and Unconscious Bias
- Social and Environmental Conditioning
  - Causes and Conditions of Bias: How We Learn Bias
- The Four Forms of Bias
  - Internalized Bias
    Internalized Bias and Victimhood
    Internalized Bias and Entitlement
  - Interpersonal Bias
    Interpersonal Bias: Thoughts and Emotions
    Interpersonal Bias: Words and Actions
  - Institutional and Systemic Bias
    The Three Buckets of Institutional Bias
    Obstacles to Remedying Institutional Bias
- Unlearning the Programming
- PRISM Practices

Part II: The Making of Bias

- Defining Policies
- Biological Identity: Facial Features
  - Biological Identity: Descent
    Casteism: Descent-based Subordination in South Asia
    Antisemitism: Descent-based Subordination of Jewish People
- Social Identities: Religion and Ethnicity
  - Islamophobia and Other Religious & Ethnic Biases
- Experiential Identities: Profession and Class
  - The Underlying Story of Class
- The First Two Causes of Bias for All Secondary Identities
- PRISM Practices
- Race and a Christian God
- The Four Phases of Race
  - 1400s– : Phase 1, Descent-Based Hierarchy
    Policy of Human Trafficking, Land Theft, and Colonization
  - 1500s–1600s: Phase 2, Appearance-Based Hierarchy
    1691: The Legal Invention of Whiteness
    The Need for a Story of Race
  - 1700s: Phase 3, Pseudoscience Drafts a Folktale of Racial Categories
    The Invention of “Caucasian” and the Race Folktale Sold as Science
  - 1800s–Present: Phase 4, Christianity Codifies the Story of Race as Religion
    Western Scientists Codify the Story of Race as Science
    Nation-States Codify the Story of Race as Policy
  - 1970s–Present: Race in the Era of Inclusion Consciousness
- PRISM Practices
- Patriarchy, Misogyny, and the Gender Hierarchy
  - Feminine and Masculine: The Is-ness of Gender
- Patriarchy: The Four Phases of Gender Hierarchy
  - 10,000?–1500 b.c.e.: Phase 1, Invention of Stories of Gender Hierarchy
  - 1500 b.c.e.–Present: Phase 2, Layering Stories of Gender Hierarchy
    The Abrahamic Faiths’ Dominant Story of Gender
    The Abrahamic Story of Gender and LGBTQ+ Humans
  - 1400s–Present: Phase 3, European Christianity Layers the Gender Binary Globally
    Globalizing the Meta-Layer of Binary Gender
    Western Scientists Codify the Gender Binary as Science
    Gendered White-Bodied Humans
    Gendered Humans of Color
    Nation-States Codify the Gender Binary as Policy
  - 1970s–Present: Phase 4, Cracking the Gender Hierarchy
    The Convergence Gender-Equality Movements
    Moving Forward
- PRISM Practices

Part III: Our Training in Bias

- Culture’s First Vector: Social Contact
- Culture’s Second Vector: Education
- Culture’s Third Vector: Media
- Cultures before Modernity
- Modernity: A Culture of Domination and Disembodiment
  - Modernity’s Currency of Power
  - Modernity’s Disembodied Culture and Injustice
- Healing the Disembodiment with PRISM
  - Choosing Skillfully with PRISM
  - Inclusion Consciousness, Embodiment, and Healing
- Prosocial Behavior PRISM Practice: Compassion
- Social Contact and Our Training in Bias
  - Breaking Bias in Our Built Environment
  - Breaking Bias with Our Significant Humans
  - Breaking Bias with Our Choices
- Unlearning Bias by Choosing PRISM
- PRISM Practices
- Education and Our Training in Bias
  - My Entry into Education
- The Origins of the Modern Educational System
- Breaking Bias by Filling the Knowledge Gaps
- Healing the Disembodiment of Education
  - Learning Embodiment with PRISM
- PRISM Practices
- Media and Our Training in Bias
  - Media and Habits of Thoughts
- Modernity and the Origins of Media
- The Full Sensory Experience of Broadcast and Digital Media
  - Media and System 1 Training
  - Media Consumption and Disembodiment
  - Media and Exploitation of Our Biology
- Inclusion Consciousness and Media
  - Media, PRISM, and Developing System 2 Thinking
  - Releasing the Stories and Taking Control of Where Our Attention Goes
- PRISM Practices

The Promise of Breaking Bias
Glossary of Terms
Endnotes
Abridged Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author

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Hi, I’m Anu!

As a gay immigrant of color, I came to the work of breaking bias after almost ending my life due to lifelong experiences with racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. The realization that bias is learned—and can be unlearned—helped lead me out of that dark point and inspired a lifelong mission to build a global movement for social healing based on principles of mindfulness and compassion.

I’m also a peer-reviewed author and have written and spoken extensively, including on the TED stage, the Oprah Conversation, Fast Company, and Newsweek .

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Praise for Breaking Bias

His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama

The highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism
“I commend the author and hope this book will help people to come closer to one another through breaking biases on the basis of secondary differences like race, religion, rich or poor that divide us.”
Dan Harris

New York Times best-selling Author of 10% Happier and host of the Ten Percent Happier Podcast
“Your biases can hurt other people, but they can also hurt you. They can damage your relationships and degrade your decision-making. But the good news is: they’re not your fault, and they can be addressed. Anu is the perfect guide to transform all biases in the modern world.”
Valarie Kaur

Best-selling author of See No Stranger and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project
“Masterful, practical, and wise, Breaking Bias is essential reading….Learn how to dismantle systems of oppression, embrace the worth of all beings, and build a world of belonging...This book will inspire you to a life of Revolutionary Love. Anu Gupta is a guiding light, and this book is his radiant offering.”
Tara Brach, PhD

Best-selling author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge
“Evolving beyond the biases that separate us is the core task of humanity if we are to meet the existential challenges that face us…Breaking Bias offers a powerful set of mindfulness-based tools to help us dismantle conscious and unconscious bias and repair the horrific harms it has caused. This timely book is a beacon of hope in our precious, hurting world.”
Jack Kornfield

Author of A Path With Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
“Learning to see and understand bias is deeply important for our world, especially now. Breaking Bias is a valuable and illuminating curriculum that will help not only with understanding bias, but also ending it.”
Sharon Salzberg

Best-selling author of Lovingkindness and Real Life
“Compassionate, vulnerable, and mind-expanding, Breaking Bias is a powerful guidebook to deepen our understanding of bias and how to break the cycle…Anu sparks individual awakening for collective change. This book is an invitation to join the movement towards a world celebrating our diversity and honoring our inherent belonging.”
Rev. Jacqui Lewis, PhD

Senior Minister for Public Theology and Transformation at Middle Collegiate Church and author of Fierce Love
“Breaking Bias uniquely captured me and would not let me go…Anu's kindness accompanies the reader on a journey informed by the depth and breadth of his experience, research, wisdom, compassion and hope…A must read for all who yearn for a more just society.”

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“Anu Gupta gives us a clear view of how bias takes root in society, ranging from the beginnings of written history to the realities of the modern world. He invites us on an inner journey, to take our own beliefs and hold them up to the light. Breaking Bias will radically shift your perspective on the power structures around you while drawing you a new map of the world. This book inspires change and creates a new vision where isolation and exclusion can be replaced by connection and belonging.”

Deepa Purushothaman, best-selling author of The First, The Few, The Only, executive fellow at Harvard Business School, and retired managing partner at Deloitte
“Anu Gupta explores crises of human interrelationality at the level of the soul: questions that prompt deep reflection, and offer avenues for even deeper relationships. Doing so as a friend, a teacher, and a scientist, his approach is one that envisions flourishing for all. This helpful and necessary book is a balm.”

Pádraig Ó Tuama, host of Poetry Unbound from On Being Studios and author of Poetry Unbound
“Anu Gupta is a professional bias breaker. He’s brought his wisdom to more than 80,000 people around the world from all walks of life. Yes, he’s a master teacher. Yes, he will expertly guide readers through a breadth of impressive knowledge and actionable steps rooted in neuroscience to unlearn and break bias. But most importantly, Anu is an unfailingly kind friend who genuinely wants the best for all of us. How lucky are we to have Breaking Bias in our hands?”

Barbara Becker, author of Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind
“Anu Gupta’s Breaking Bias is a tour de force! Part history lesson, part personal science experiment, part toolkit, this book brings together deep wisdom with practical skills to help us all learn how to move out of our conditioned biases and into a new, more connected way of relating to each other. A must read!”

Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, New York Times best-selling author of Unwinding Anxiety and The Craving Mind
“Breaking Bias is a triumph! Anu Gupta has developed an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand how contemporary social, ethnic, cultural, gendered, religious and anthropocentric biases came into being, how they spread, and how to break through them! In this book, Gupta offers a comprehensive historical overview of bias with clear articulations of how bias shapes inequity in social organizational, national and international policies. This book is a must read!”

Dr. Kamilah Majied, author of Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights For Liberated Living
“With brilliant prose and infinite grace, Anu Gupta’s Breaking Bias invites every single one of us to look in the mirror and marvel at what we see. Then, go out into the world and challenge the notions that stand in the way of our ability to look at one another and do the very same. With sacred practices, thoughtful data and a deep reverence for life, Breaking Bias helps us bring greater understanding to the learned and often painful attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that separate us from ourselves and each other. We can do better. And this timely and crucial book shows us the way.”

Rha Goddess, founder & CEO of Move The Crowd and author of The Calling
“Breaking Bias might be the most important book you read in the 21st century. As sweeping as any Yuval Harari book and as challenging as Paul Hawken’s, Anu Gupta’s powerful and impeccably researched book is a masterclass in understanding our species: why we are the way we are and how to create a better world where belonging replaces bias. Everyone in a position of power, authority, or influence needs this book and it is a required reading for any social entrepreneur or aspiring changemaker anywhere in the world.”

Susan Davis, founding President & CEO, BRAC USA, co-author, Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know
“What a gift! Breaking Bias is a call to all of us to grow up to our potential and down to our depths. This is more than a book. It is a beautiful witness to our inherent possibilities and a guide to the transformation that can save us from ourselves.”

Dr. Larry Ward, senior teacher in Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village tradition, author of America's Racial Karma, and co-author of Love's Garden, A Guide To Mindful Relationships
“Anu Gupta's Breaking Bias is a rigorous and expansive investigation of a human tangle and illness—assumption and bias. I am grateful for Anu's innovative antidote of PRISM, a pragmatic and heartening medicine to confront and transform the root causes of bias. Let's take the medicine together.”

Koshin Paley Ellison, Zen teacher and author of Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage and Compassion
“In Breaking Bias, Anu Gupta's clarity and open-heartedness invite us to reflect on the great suffering caused by racial, gender, and all forms of stereotypes, to understand more fully their religious, social and economic underpinnings, and to explore ways of freeing ourselves from these deeply conditioned patterns. This book is a remarkable and eye-opening interweaving of the history, culture and personal experiences of bias and prejudice that so deeply affected his own journey and have such an impact on all of our lives. It's rare to find a work that is so unflinching in its analysis and so compassionate and understanding in illuminating the way forward. Highly recommended!”

Joseph Goldstein, author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening
“In Breaking Bias, Anu Gupta offers us a powerful and accessible overview of both the roots of our species' prejudices and the actions we must take to free ourselves from them once and for all. He skillfully weaves historical analysis of various human systems of domination with reflective prompts, guiding the reader through their own thoughtful and gradual process. Anu's relatable stories of his own journey makes this sometimes challenging material a joy to read. This book provides a comprehensive and systematic pathway for breaking bias, and Anu is an expert guide through this vital journey.”

Sebene Selassie, author of You Belong

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His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama

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